The Broken Eye(311)

“Well, who looks like whipped puppies?” Aram said as they passed the Lightguard checkpoint. He laughed noisily.

Following Ironfist’s example, Kip did nothing. Aram would expect him to attack. Kip did nothing, and Aram turned, laughing at him.

After Kip was past him, he heard the clong of helmet on stone, and the laughter abruptly stopped.

Kip glanced back, but the squad hadn’t even broken stride. Aram was tottering, eyes unfocused, his helmet pushed forward over his eyebrows. The wall behind his head was scratched, as if from a helmet striking it. He sat heavily. His Lightguard compatriots were looking at him, puzzled. Kip looked forward, so as not to draw more attention.

They got to the lift, and Ironfist, who had never turned, said, “Thank you, Big Leo.”

Kip looked up at his squadmate, but the hulking young man kept looking forward, a slight, smug grin on his face.

They had to wait for the lift to arrive, and when it did, Karris was on it with two slaves. She was dabbing her flushed face with a handkerchief as if she, too, had been running, as one of the slaves tried to wrestle her long dark hair into some order, and the other, scandalized, was still lacing up the back of Karris’s dress.

Karris and her slaves stepped off the lift. “What happened?” Karris asked. “Do they know?”

“No,” Ironfist said. “The promachos just stripped me of my commission.”

“What?!” Karris asked. “We were only apart for—”

“You need to go in there. Learn what you can,” Ironfist said. “Tell them when it’s time. It’s what the White would have wanted.”

“So she’s dead.” Karris’s face twisted with grief, rapidly pushed down.

“Don’t let it make you stupid. Go. We’ll meet later,” Ironfist said.

Karris looked around as if there was more she wanted to say, but that she thought spies would overhear. “Tell Kip,” she said. Then she looked at Kip, but didn’t seem to know what to say. She reached a hand out and touched Kip’s shoulder awkwardly, as if trying to apologize for their last encounter. But there wasn’t time. Then one of her slaves dabbed one last bit of powder on her face, and Karris was off.

She waved off her slaves and glided right through the Lightguard checkpoint. Aram was still seated, holding his head. The other Lightguards looked unnerved.

“You’re not going to touch me,” Karris announced, looking right past them, head held high, the force of her personality preceding her small figure like a wave. “You’re not even going to speak to me.”

They didn’t.





Chapter 91




Zymun was seated with his grandfather on the dais, where he belonged. For now. The crown of the Prism-elect on his forehead was a welcome weight. But he’d hoped for more. Prism-elect? Why was he not simply the Prism?

It was his grandfather’s work, of course. The old man was keeping a leash on him. Zymun would make him pay, eventually. He was already irritated that the High Luxiat was the center of attention, droning on and on. Zymun had feigned respectful deference for some interminable length of time, but the luxiat simply wouldn’t shut up. So now Zymun was looking out at the assorted nobles and deciding which women he would bed.

Women afforded such drama; he loved it. The hunt was a thing of beauty. An avalanche of words and your full attention, watching always to see what flattery worked best, feeling out the weak points, returning to them often. Unrelenting attention, pretending she was the center of your world.

Then the lovemaking. First sweet and passionate, animal desire and total focus. And then, once you had them, indifference interspersed with total focus. Apologies, little gifts, confusion, and more lovemaking, degrading now.

That was, perhaps, the sweetest part. To watch a woman fall in love and to see in her eyes that she knew she shouldn’t and yet she was.

From there, it was merely a matter of completing the destruction. Fighting, making up, slapping, apologizing, cheating, first stealthily and then getting caught on purpose, apologizing, degrading, stealing and blame shifting, then acquiring whatever blackmail you needed to make sure that when you cast her off she stayed gone. Sometimes with whole weeks of sweetness mixed in. And when they were wrung out, poor, humiliated, self-hating, and ruined, he would move on, perhaps to her friends.

Married women were the best. Sometimes harder to seduce initially, but with more access to money and secrets, and less likely to cling when you cut them loose, and while he was still young, it was easier to make them take the blame. After all, he was just a boy. That they had husbands also meant that they had a harder time keeping tabs on him, so he could seek out other excitement at the same time.